Anonimia y autoría en la poesía popular griega

Abstract

This paper provides a reflection about anonymity and authorship in folk poetry
in general and in the Greek folk poetry in particular. Anonymity means absence of an
author with historical entity and it is a characteristic feature of folk poetry. On the other
hand, every text has an author, but the author of folk poetry has a different relationship
with his work from the literary author; he is constrained in his task by the traditionality of
themes and form, wich are related to the extraliterary fonction of folk poetry. Four interesting
cases of Greek folk poetry are analised which have been attributed by the tradition to
historically existing authors, and the reasons of such attribution are investigated.